


Strange Magic

by Strange_Archivist



Series: Songs for the Brokenhearted [1]
Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-22
Updated: 2017-02-16
Packaged: 2018-08-16 17:56:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 10,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8111884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Strange_Archivist/pseuds/Strange_Archivist
Summary: Mike dreams about Eleven, or are they just dreams? Is he perhaps seeing her as she really is, lost somewhere in the Upside Down, or worse? He and the gang decide to restart their efforts to find El. Because finding a lost telekinetic girl wouldn't be the strangest thing to have happened in Hawkins.Eventual reunion fic.





	1. These Dreams

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I wish, so very badly that I could take credit for the awesomeness that is Stranger Things. Alas, I cannot. I can only take credit for the below fic which is purely for fun and is not rendering me any kind of profit whatsoever.

He's more than a little afraid to ask Will about his time in the Upside Down. Partly because he knows that Will still hasn't fully recovered yet from his trip there (will he ever?), but the other part is mostly just afraid of what he'll hear. From what Nancy has told him of her short trip there, it's the stuff of nightmares, even worse than the Demagorgon.

But Will, though he seems surprised at Mike's questions at first, later tells him, “it kinda helps to talk about it, you know? Like, it's a secret that doesn't have as much power over you once you tell it.”

Mike doesn't know what to say to that, so he just nods and listens to Will talk, taking internal notes all the while.

What he's been able to glean from Will doesn't always make sense, but he charts it all out on paper later to try to at least compile his thoughts and observations.

So far, this is what he's got:  
_-The Upside Down is like a perverse reflection of our world_  
_-This means that sometimes things that are in the Right Side Up (new name for our world?) Show up in the Upside Down too, but not always. For example, Will told him he'd been able to eat a candy bar he'd left in Castle Byers the day before he disappeared, but food he knew his mom had put in the pantry a week earlier was either eroded and slimey, or just plain not there._  
_-People who are close to each other can sometimes talk or feel each other even through the dimensional divide (Will talking to his mom through the lights, Nancy hearing Jonathan shouting for her, Jonathan feeling his mom, even when she was in the Upside Down)_  
_-Sometimes electricity can act up as a result of people sort of feeling each other across the dimensional divide_  
_-Sometimes electricity can act up too when other things try to cross through the dimensions, for example, the Demagorgon_  
_-Certain things can travel between the dimensions of their own accord (Demagorgon = flea). Are there other monsters there that can do the same?_  
_-Sometimes if people are really connected, they can start to open a window or portal between the dimensions (Ms. Byers being able to sort of see Will through the weird fleshy window in her house)_  
_-The Upside Down sounds super gross. Fleshy windows and portals? Eww._

Mike looks over his list again, still feeling like he has more questions than answers. In the months since she's been gone, he's grown more desperate for something, anything that can help him find her.

When she was first gone, Mike had felt deflated. He'd put on as good a front as he could, but the other guys would call him out on it from time to time. His campaigns had lost their edge, he just didn't feel anything he dreamed up could compare to that week with her.

He sees her in his dreams. The dreams were fragmented and fleeting at first, but over time they got stronger and longer.

He would see her in a vast black river floating between two shores, one looked like the Upside Down, the other, the Right Side Up. For a while, that was all there was to it, at first, he'd barely even been able to make out more than her face. But slowly he saw the ripples around her that made him realise she must have been in some sort of liquid, stars reflected in it, and eventually, the two shores.

Then, one day in late July, the dream was different again. It started out the same, seeing her floating there, the shores, the ripples in the river. Only this time, her eyes opened, and she said one word. “Mike.”

He’d woken up in a cold sweat, his heart racing. This felt... different than a dream, this WAS different than a dream, had been for a long time, he knew that now. He was seeing her, really seeing her, wherever it was that she was, just like Ms. Byers had been able to talk to Will.

He tries not to complicate things in his head by wondering what it means that he can talk to her the way Will’s mom talked to him. Will had told him his mom's theory was that love could somehow transcend the dimensional divide.

Love? Well, maybe. There would be time to figure that out later. He's only thirteen after all, and his friend is missing, and he doesn't know what to do.

He constantly keeps his radio on now, tuned to what's usually nothing but static, but every once in a while, he thinks he hears something.

The guys think he's nuts when he finally confesses this to them in October. Dustin claps a sympathetic hand on his shoulder and says, “I'm sorry, buddy, but I think if she were able to, she'd have come back by now. I mean, she has super powers for crying out loud.”

“Yeah man,” Lucas chimes in. “I hate to say it, but I think Dustin's right. You may have to start to consider the possibility that she's gone for good.”

“She's not gone, I- I know it. I can feel it. The way Will’s mom knew he wasn't gone.” He tries very hard not to blush a this. “I think she's lost. And I think she needs help getting unlost. I think… I think she's slipping through worlds and doesn't have any control over it.”

“Dude,” Lucas responds, a sad knowing in his voice. “I know you like, got all googly eyed for her and stuff, but I think you need to give it a rest, Romeo.”

“Yeah man, it doesn't end well for Romeo, you know?” Dustin says. “Remember from Mrs. Shellhamer’s English class?”

 _It doesn't end well for Juliet either_ , he thinks, remembering the play they'd read in school. But he just mumbles, “shut up, that's not what this is about.” He knows how desperate his theories sound, and he’s about to concede their point and say so, when Will says, “it could be. I've… I've kind of been having similar, um, slips.”

This stuns everyone into an awkward silence.

Lucas recovers first. “Wait, what? For how long?”

“Since I got back, I guess. It sort of comes and goes. For a while I was coughing up these creepy slug things, and it would mostly happen then. But sometimes it'd be random, like, I'd be turning the tv on and it'd happen again.”

“Why didn't you tell us?” Dustin asks.

“I dunno, I guess I was just sorta hoping they'd go away. They started happening less, and for shorter times. I haven't had one in a couple of weeks. And, I mean… well, it sounds nuts.”

“You have heard the story about all the crazy shit that went down while you were gone, right?” Lucas says.

“Yeah man, we saw that monster, it broke into our school,” Dustin assures him.

“The point is,” Lucas says, nodding along with Dustin, “weird shit isn’t really all that weird to us anymore, you know?”

Will’s small smile at his friends reminds Mike of El’s small smile. It’s the smile of someone feeling understood and accepted. He doesn’t say this to the other boys though. Instead he says, “Ok, so what do we do? How do we get Will and El to stop slipping through worlds and to stay in our world?”

No one has an answer for that.


	2. Everywhere

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I don't own Stranger Things or the characters or make any profit off of the below fic involving the Stranger Things world and characters.

She is nothing and everything at once. She is a smattering of sensations, like the wings of waves, flapping and cresting and breaking together and apart again and again.

Or at least she was. For how long, she doesn’t know. But she knows that now, at least, she’s mostly solid. Except for when she falls through. The falling through happened a lot at first. She guesses vaguely because she was everywhere and nowhere then. And now she’s mostly here. Except for when she isn’t.

Here is the black place she used to go when she was in the isolation tank. It’s quiet and mostly peaceful here. But it’s boring, and a bit unnerving when it begins to remind her of things she used to see here.

Demogorgon. Barb gone. Castle Byers. Bad men.

She smiles then, thinking of Dustin interpreting Lucas saying “bad men” as “mad hen” over the radios.

Dustin. Lucas. And-

“Mike.” She says out loud, the first thing she’s said out loud (she thinks, anyway) in… well, she doesn’t know how long. She’s overwhelmed for a moment with the memories. The warm clothes he gave her. The blanket fort. Learning about Lay-z-boys and eggos and Rory and Yoda. Being pretty. His mouth against hers.

Something appears then in the black place, the first thing she can remember appearing here since she was fully aware of being here. It’s a bed, with a sleeping form in it. She steps forward, looks down at the tangle of blankets only half covering a skinny, freckled boy who she recognizes instantly.

“Mike,” she says again.

His eyes open, for a moment she thinks he sees her, and she tries to say more, but his form mists away and she falls through again.

The first time she remembers falling through, she fell into the right side up. She’d been so glad, she’d started crying and fell through everything all over again, fortunately stopping again in the Right Side Up. After that, she kept her emotions in check as best she could, and stood, walking through the woods on wobbly legs, at first, feeling like she didn’t exactly know where she was going. She felt disoriented, but seemingly out of habit, she bent over a box nearly hidden by snow, and opened it, finding eggos and a container of chicken legs. She had a vague sensation of having opened this box before, and eating out of it, but can’t place, when, where or why.

She didn’t ponder her actions too much, she was hungry. She ate the food with gusto, barely noticing for a moment when she slipped into the Upside Down, the container of food still in her lap. She cried out before thinking better of it, but she slipped through again, this time into a red/orange world she has no name for. Then another, and another after that, faster and faster, a whirlwind of realities until she finally stopped again in the Upside Down. She greedily finished the last of her food, then looked around into the perverse dimension, seeing only ruin and darkness. Then everything misted away again and she she was in the black place.

Now, falling through isn’t as fast, but it still happens. She realizes, after having remembered her friends, that someone must be leaving the food for her, especially the eggos, in the Right Side Up. She can get to it usually even if she’s in the Upside Down. Food doesn’t appear in a box in the woods in any of the other realities, but that doesn’t surprise her. None of them are as connected to the Upside Down and Right Side up as they are to each other. She spends most of her time in the Upside Down now, even though she’s terrified she’ll run into another Demagorgon or worse, because it’s closer to the Right Side Up than anything else. It’s closer to her friends. To Mike.

The rest of the time is mostly spent in the black place. She thinks, perhaps the black place somewhat healed her, after her fight with the Demogorgon. The black place is certainly less scary to her than the Upside Down, even though she feels closer to her friends there. But here, in the black place, she feels much more calm. Almost as calm as if she were in the Right Side Up, but she can never stay there very long, and most days, she can't even get to the Right Side Up. 

So she rests where she's calmest, when she can. Even though she can tell she’s gotten stronger, she is still tired. Just, so very tired.


	3. Control

“Control”

 

It’s been about a month since Mike last came to the place where they first found her that rainy night. He hasn’t told the other guys he’s still been coming here, they’d been worried after he’d continued to come about four months into her disappearance. Dustin had insisted it “wasn’t healthy, man”. So he took to coming to what he called “her place” in the woods alone. But coming alone made him feel even lonelier. Like he was the only one who remembered she’d existed. The guys coming back with him now gave him a strange sense of hope again.

“I think I might have found something,” Dustin calls after they've all wandered around the woods for about a half hour. 

“What is it?” Mike says, rushing over.

“I dunno,” Dustin says, brushing away leaves and branches and dirt and grime.

Mike almost thinks it's just a scrap of spare two by four, that wound up in the woods somehow, until he sees the dull metal latch on the side.

It looks like the lid of a large wooden box, the bulk of which, Mike realizes, must be half hidden under the leaves and branches and dirt.

“What do you think’s inside?” Lucas asks, leaning over to have a look as well.

“Only one way to find out,” Mike decides, and opens the box.

For a brief moment he had hoped it was somehow a porthole to the Upside Down, and he'd see El on the other side.

He tries not to let the disappointment show on his face when they only find a Tupperware, mostly empty save for a few scraps of ham, and an empty piece of cellophane with a few indistinguishable yellow crumbs in it. Mike sighs.

“Come on man, you didn't expect her to be in there, did you?” Lucas says, correctly reading him.

“No, but… I dunno, I didn't expect to find this either. What even is this? I mean, where did it come from?”

“Dude, don't overthink it, it's probably just stuff someone left behind from a camping trip.”

“Oh come on, nobody camps out here anymore. Not after last year.”

“Yeah, besides, this ham hasn't been here that long,” Dustin says, sniffing at the tupperware. “A few days at most.” He gingerly bites a corner of one of the pieces of ham.

“Ew, Dustin, that's nasty!” Lucas exclaims.

But Mike just asks, “how do you know?”

“Because, man-”

“He's right,” Will says, surprising them all a bit because he'd previously been so quiet. 

“I think. I think she was here. Maybe. In the Upside Down.”

Mike is all ears now. “You do? How can you tell that?”

“Because I'm there right now.”

Dustin, Mike, and Lucas all exchange a nervous glance before looking back at their friend.

“Uh, no dude, you're here, in the Right Side Up,” Dustin says, slowly. 

“We can see you,” Lucas insists. “You're standing right here with us.”

“I know,” Will says, confusing them even more. “I'm both places at once. It's sort of like standing with my feet on either side of the border.”

“What?” Lucas asks, sounding confused. 

“I can't explain it. It's sort of like I can travel on the edge of both.”

“Shadowwalking,” Dustin mumbles.

“Huh?”

“Shadowwalking,” Dustin repeats. “Walking along the edges of planes of existence.”

“The flea,” Mike says, comprehending.

“Yes,” Will agrees, having heard the explanation of the flea and the acrobat since last year. 

“So why do you think she was here then?” Mike asks. “Just because you can shadowwalk here?”

“Well, a little bit. I think because it's a weak point in the realities, she might have broken through here once or twice. But also, there are footprints in the Upside Down. Like, wet tennis shoes on cement.”

Tennis shoes. Like his old pair he'd given her to wear.

“Where do they lead, can we follow them?”

“I can try. I-” his disappearance into thin air cuts him off.

“Holy shit, did that just happen?!” Lucas exclaims. 

“Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God…”

“Shut up, Dustin,” Mike says, then shouts, “Will!”

“Will! WILL!” The other boys cry.

Will materializes in front of them again as suddenly as he disappeared, and he collapses to the ground.

“Jesus, are you ok?”

Will doesn’t answer for a moment, just coughs and heaves. He's then helped to his feet by his friends and says, “yeah. Yeah, I'm ok.” Mike watches him look around at the disbelieving faces of the other guys. “Just give me a minute, ok?”

They all step back from him a bit, and watch him expectantly for what feels like ages. Will coughs some more, and walks around a bit, shutting his eyes at odd intervals, as if concentrating.

Finally, Will stops facing them and says, “I'm sorry.”

“What do you mean?” Mike asks.

Will shakes his head “I'm sorry, but I don't see it anymore. The Upside Down. It's still hard for me to control when I'm here or when I'm there. I'm sorry, Mike.”

Mike instantly feels his insides churn with guilt at how eager he was to let his friend go back into the Upside Down, even if it was to try to find another friend. “It's ok, don't worry about it right now,” he says. “Come on, we'll try again tomorrow.”

The other guys nod, but Dustin is frowning at the tupperware. 

“What is it?” Lucas says. “Realized eating old ham was the greatest idea afterall?”

“Shut up.” Dustin shoves him. “No, look at the tupperware.”

“What am I supposed to be seeing?”

But Mike saw what he was pointing at. On the bottom of the plastic container, scribbled in what must have been permanent marker, was a name.

“Hopper.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks everyone for all the reviews and kudos so far! I love writing these kids so much!


	4. Here I Go Again

The box is a bit different. She doesn't know why at first when she starts to approach it. Everything else around her is the same. The dull, dark grey of the Upside Down, all the fleshy vines pulsating over everything. 

There's nothing new in the box, in fact, there's nothing at all in the box. Eleven sighs her disappointment, closing the box again, trying to ignore her growling stomach.

Her hand rests on the box for a moment, and that's when she realizes. What's different. 

The place feels different. Someone else has been to her box.

She rests her hand on the lid of the box again and closes her eyes.

She hears voices and sees faces. Dustin, Lucas, Will, and Mike. They were here, she realizes. Not long ago. The thought fills her with a warmth.

Why they were here, she doesn’t know, for how long, she doesn’t know either. The images and words that fill her mind are fragmented and blurred, but she knows they were here. And not very long ago. She wonders if perhaps she had been there sooner, she might have been able to feel them. But time moves strangely in the Upside Down and even more so in the black place. She doesn't know how she can catch them.

She tries to focus on the warmth seeing her friends gives her, hears the words, “I think she was here.” And wonders if they were talking about her.

Why would they be looking for you? An awful voice whispers in her ear. She's used to this by now too, even though it still chills her. The horrible, hateful whispers of the Upside Down. The doubt, anger, and fear of them.

They don't care about you, the voice continues. Why should they?

She curls up into herself against the whispers, but they still come, gusted in by some foul wind of this place. They fill up her head with bad memories. 

Papa. The lab. So many nights spent in the closet as punishment for not performing well enough at her tasks that day.

Dustin calling her a weirdo. Lucas calling her a traitor. Mike yelling at her, “what’s wrong with you? What is wrong with you?”

“You hurt me, do you understand? What you did sucks!”

“Why would you do that? What's wrong with you?”

They hated you, the voice tells her. They only wanted you to find their friend, the way papa and the bad men wanted you to find people.

She remembers Mike telling her she was a friend, and not really quite understanding it. “A friend is someone you’d do anything for,” she remembers the boys saying. They’d certainly risked a lot for her. And she for them. Was it enough?

A new seed of worry is planted in her mind, and begins to grow sickly, slimy vines of doubt throughout her being. Maybe they were scared by all she did, even if it was to protect them, to protect herself. After all, she'd killed people. She'd squeezed their brains. Her brief experience in the outside world had made her realize it wasn't normal for people to go around squishing other people's brains with their minds.

Maybe she was the monster. Or is the monster. Sometimes she looks down and sees the Demogorgon’s claws where her own hands should be.

Like now. Now her hands are scaly slimy clawed gray, and this time, no amount of blinking makes the image fade. She is the monster.

She cries and bursts into a thousand trembling pieces.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry I haven't updated in a while, life sort of got away from me. Thank you again to everyone for the comments and kudos!


	5. One Thing Leads to Another

“Alright, one at a time, ONE AT A DAMN TIME!” the beleaguered looking police chief shouts at them in his office.

“You,” he says to Dustin, taking the tupperware from him. “Where’d you find this?”

“Out by Mirkwood,” Mike cuts in.

“Did I ask you, kid? What the hell were you guys doing out there anyway? I thought I told you to stay away from that place!”

“What were you doing out there?” Dustin 

“Yeah!” Lucas and Mike shout together.

The boys all shout accusatory questions at Hopper over each other again, most of which are unintelligible, but the gist of which are “Do you know something we don’t?” and “Why didn’t you tell us?”

The chief shouts them all down again and says, “haven’t you all done enough detective work to last you boys a lifetime?”

Feeling a surge of rebellious anger, Mike says, “What’s that got to do with anything? You wouldn’t have found Will without our help last year, and now, maybe we need your help to find Eleven. Don’t we owe it to her to find her?”

Clearly, he’s struck a nerve. The chief turns nearly purple and shouts, “You owe it to your parents to stay safe! Didn’t you think for a second about what they would go through if something happened to you? Don’t you remember how hard it was on Joyce?”

“Yeah well, it’s a little late to keep us all safe,” Will says wryly.

“What?”

“I’ve been going back. To the Upside Down. Sometimes for just a second, sometimes longer. I can’t really control it, but, I think - I think it could help us find her, if I can use it.”

The chief sits back down again at his desk and rubs his face with his hands.

“Jesus, kid. Can’t you give your mom a break?”

“Believe me,” Will says, “I would if I could.”

The chief drives to the Byers home, followed by the four of them on their bikes, Dustin now wearing the tupperware on his head over his usual baseball cap, a strange little parade.

Mike thinks he should have asked the chief if he’d seen or heard anything about Eleven in the Upside Down before, after all, he had been there, but then, Hopper wasn’t exactly approachable, and Mike’s parents had encouraged him to put the ordeal behind him.

“Yeah right,” he mutters under his breath as he approaches the Byers home. As if he could ever put something like that behind him.

It’s always weird to hear adults call each other by their first names, Mike thinks as the chief asks Ms. Byers if he and the boys can come inside. But Ms. Byers doesn’t seem to mind being called “Joyce” by Hopper and quickly ushers them all inside.

She does, however, seem to mind terribly that Will hasn’t told her about his episodes in the Upside Down.

“Why didn’t you tell me?!” she cries, putting an arm around her son.

“I didn’t want you to worry!” Will says. “I - I didn’t want to worry. Like, it felt like, talking about it would make it more real. I was scared, mom. I didn’t know what to do, and you’d already been through enough.”

Mike and the other boys stand awkwardly around as the mother and son embrace in tears. No one seems to want to break the relative silence so they all look around at each other until Will pulls back and says, “going back to the Upside Down, it sucks, but I think maybe it means I can find her, Eleven. The girl who found me.”

“Boys,” Ms. Byers says, wiping a tear away. “Can you all please give me and the chief a moment in private?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone who's kept reading! I'm sorry the updates have been so short and infrequent, life has just been a little all over the place for me lately (literally, I was on vacation in a country 4000 miles away from my home country), but I promise I will try to keep it going and make it as satisfying a read as I can! Your kudos and reviews really do make a huge difference on my motivation, even when it seems like I have zero time to write, so thank you all for that too!


	6. Sweet Child O' Mine

“What the hell, Hop? I thought we were done with this bullshit! I thought we'd put it behind us!” Joyce shouts, her shaking hands lighting a cigarette. 

“Yeah well, I did too, or at least I hoped so,” Jim says, taking his hat off and fidgeting with it.

“Oh come on, Hop, you knew something was still up. Food in that box for her? What do you know?”

Jim sets his hat down on the table and says, “look, I wasn't sure at first. I mean, I know I lagged behind you a bit coming out of the Upside Down to try to find that monster and kill it. And I saw her, I think.”

“And you left her there?”

“Look, it's not like that! I saw something that looked like her, all curled up like she was sleeping. I tried to pick her up, but I couldn't, it was like she was a mirage or something. I know it sounds crazy, and I thought I was going crazy. I figured the Upside Down was fucking with me and I needed to get out of there. Afterwards, when the boys told me what happened to her, well, I made her the box as more of a tribute than anything, sort of in her memory. But then the food kept disappearing, especially the eggos and I figured maybe it really had been her that I saw, but I didn’t know how to get her out of there. I still don't really. Been trying to figure it out all year.”

“And you didn't tell us?”

“You'd already been through enough. Besides, I didn't want to give those boys false hope if there was no chance of saving her.”

Joyce takes a long drag on her cigarette and considers him. “But now you think there's a chance?”

“Well, yeah. Plus, those boys pretty much cornered me.”

Joyce smiles, knowing just how demanding the boys can be.

“Look, Joyce. I won't try anything with Will trying to look for her without your permission. God knows I wouldn't blame you if you said no-”

“He can do it,” Joyce cuts him off.

“What? But, I thought-”

“She's just a little girl, Hop. Of course we can't leave her in there after those - people did who knows what to her? Of course I want to help. Besides, she saved Will. And I know he'd try to help her anyway because he's a good boy like that.” Joyce’s voice waivers at the last word and she takes another long drag on her cigarette to calm her nerves at the thought of her little boy going back into that… place again. She knows it's the right thing to do, that Eleven needs someone to look out for her like a mother would, since those scientists would only want her back in the lab to do more experiments and her real mother is over a hundred miles away and in no condition to look out for her. But goddamn, she wishes there was another way.

Knowing there isn't another way though, Joyce says, “he can do it. Try to find her. But if he at any point says it's too much or he wants to stop, we stop, understand? I won't lose him again.”

Jim nods. “Of course.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so sorry I left this for so long! Thank you for still reading, I'm hoping to only need a few more chapters to wrap this up.
> 
> Speaking of chapters, has anyone guessed how I'm naming them? It's like my own little inside joke, but I'm curious to see if anyone has seen it :)


	7. Tainted Love

Shattering hurts so bad. Well, maybe it isn’t really the shattering that hurts. It’s probably more the coming back together that hurts. Her mind at once is stretched and squeezed and slicked and teased like hair made from the clay Papa would sometimes let her play with if she had done well in her training that day.

The thought of Papa sends a bolt of sharp black hatred coursing through her stomach. She had loved him once, he was the only one who’d shown her any sort of affection at all, but when her training had started and the punishments started for her poor performance, that love became twisted and harder for her to feel. When he’d tried to force her to kill the cat, that was the day she had decided she no longer could love him.

The exact moment she stopped loving him happened when she’d killed the two guards with her mind.

She’d hated doing it, but wanted out and they were keeping her in. She’d felt sick with rage and regret afterwards and when Papa had come into the tiny room and picked up her weak frame, instead of comforting her, all he’d said had been, “Incredible.”

It was that day that she realized that he didn’t care for her, only cared about keeping her and using her as an important asset for his purposes. And now that he knew she could kill with her mind, he would try to get her to do that too.

So when the monster had come through the gate she’d accidentally opened and caused chaos in the lab, she took the opportunity to run and ran. First into Benny and then into Mike.

Benny's death weighs on her too, he was only shot because he'd tried to help her after all. Maybe it would be best, she thinks, if she never made her way back to the Right Side Up and her friends. She seems to put everyone who shows her kindness into danger.

Her guilt mingles with the ravenous hunger churning in her belly, a noxious poison of misery, but she still feels so weak and cannot force herself from the black place to the Upside Down to see if there's anything in the box.

She's about to fall into another deep sleep when she hears it.

“El?”

Someone else's voice is calling her name. It sounds like whoever it is is right next to her and far away at the same time.

“El?” they call again. She thinks she recognizes the voice this time. It's been a while, and she'd only spoken to him once, but she's fairly certain it's-

“El, can you hear me? It's Will.”

She tries to respond, but her throat feels almost dusty from lack of use and the exhaustion from shattering that she can only manage a weak cough.

He must be on a radio where others can hear though because she hears a rustling, then-

“El? Is that you? Let us know if you can hear us!”

She would know that voice anywhere.

“El, it's Mike. Will might be able to come get you. He can go between the Upside Down and Right Side up. But we need to know where you are.”

“Mike,” she finally manages.

“El! You're there!”

El smiles vaguely at his exclamation. “Yes.”

“Can you tell us where you are in the Upside Down? We want to try to find you.”

“Not in Upside Down.” she says, frowning. 

“Wait, but, if you aren't in the Upside Down, where are you?”

“Black place,” she says. The effort of talking is exhausting. 

“The black place? Where is that?”

“Between,” she says. “Not Upside Down. Not right side up.”

“Ok, well, how do we get there?”

She doesn’t know. Well, they could try a bath, but she doesn't think that would work. She doesn't know how to explain any of this and she's so tired, so she just says, “Mike, you should leave.”

“What? Why? Is the Demagorgon coming?”

She doesn’t know how to make him understand. It’s not something else coming from the Upside Down that worries her, she worries she'll put him in danger again. Even if she could make it back, would Papa’s bad men stop hunting her? Probably not. Even now they might be listening. 

But words are so hard. “Bad,” she says. “Bad friend.”

“What? What do you mean?”

“Bad friend,” she says again before becoming a part of the darkness around her.


	8. Total Eclipse of the Heart

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone still reading! I promise, I am getting close ish to a conclusion. Thank you also for your reviews, they have really helped keep me committed to finishing what I started. Although, these characters are also super fun to write. If only they were my own creation. Alas, they are not. Anyway, on with the chapter!

“What? El? El!” Mike turns the volume up on the Supercom, but there was still only static. “El!” he shouts again, feeling nearly as gutted as he had the night when she first disappeared with the demagorgon. “Eleven!? El, please!”

“Shit, what happened?” Dustin asks, taking the Supercom from Mike and fiddling with it.

“I don’t know!” Lucas shouts. “Do you know, Will?”

Will, who, as he’d explained it to the rest of the guys, had been doing his best to try to let himself be fluid through the dimensions in order to keep the radio connection, seems shaken from a trance. “I - I dunno. I think she’s right though, I don’t think she was in the Upside Down. Not quite, exactly.”

“Well what does that mean?” Mike demands.

“I don’t know, okay? It was like she was there, but not. I’m sorry.” Will’s mom puts her arm around him.

“It’s okay honey, we know you did your best,” she says.

“Okay, everyone just calm down,” the chief says.

“What do we do now though?” Mike asks no one in particular, feeling desperate.

“The chief’s right,” Dustin says. “We all need to shut up a minute and figure this out.”

“But we still don’t even understand half of this!” Lucas insists. “How are we supposed to figure it out!”

“I dunno but we aren’t going to just by shouting at each other, so shut up, okay!”

They're all silent a moment.

Mike’s head churns with memories of everything they had learned about the Upside Down and El. “Okay, what did Will’s mom say about when she felt Will in the Upside Down?”

“I can't explain how I knew,” Ms. Byers says. “I just did. He's my boy. I'm his mother.”

“Right. And we know El’s there because we care about her too. She's our friend.”

“Maybe it needs to come from both sides,” Will says, his voice raw with fresh realization.   
“What do you mean?”

“I mean, like, I was there for a week and it almost broke me. The thing that kept me going was knowing I had people here who cared about me, a family that loved me. El’s been there nearly a year.”

“Right. And, she never really had a family,” Mike jumps in, catching on. “And we were her first friends.” 

“Right,” Will agrees.

“Are you saying she’s lost the will to come back?” Dustin says, a smile hinting at the corners of his mouth.

Lucas groans at the pun, but Will only smiles.

“Terrible pun,” Will says, “but I think, kind of? I mean, I was able to talk to my mom a little bit too, and that gave me hope to keep going.”

“What was it she said at the end there, ‘bad friend’? What does that mean?” Mike asks, recalling the emptiness of her tone and how it made him ache to think how lonely she must be. “Was she calling us bad friends for not trying to find her sooner?”

“She’d better not be,” Lucas says. “You’ve been obsessed with finding her for a year and Chief Hopper’s the one who’s been feeding her eggos.”

“I don’t think it’s that,” the chief says, his eyes taking on the far-off look they always did whenever he was working through a problem. “As far as we know, Hawkins lab is still looking for her, right? And whether you kids will admit it or not, she put you guys in a lot of danger last year - inadvertently,” the chief adds hastily under the ferocity of Mike’s glare. “Inadvertently, but still. I think she’s worried she’s the bad friend. And I can’t say I blame her. We have no way of knowing whether the lab listened in on our conversation just now, and that could mean they’re sending their goonies out even as we speak.”

“We’ll have to be more careful,” Ms. Byers says. “The lights. They can’t track that. And everyone will just think I’m going crazy again, and if the lab tries to pin something on me because they think I’m looking for her, they’ll have a hard job of it because no one believes the story from last year, they’re not going to believe this one either.”

Everyone starts into a flurry of excited chatter and movement then about where to find Ms. Byers’ Christmas lights and how to make a letter wall so they could talk. But Mike still feels uneasy.

Dustin must sense his unease because he’s the only one still left sitting when everyone else goes to find the lights. “Okay, but that doesn’t explain what she was saying about the black place,” Mike says to Dustin.

“Doesn’t it?” Dustin jumps in. “Think about it. Whenever El was in the bath, she said she could sometimes see things that were either here or in the Upside Down. But what else is there?”

“Are you saying-?”

“What if the black place is where she goes whenever she’s in the bath? It’s like, sort of an in between?”

“But,” Mike says, remembering her in the kiddie pool full of saltwater, “she didn't actually go there, I mean, not physically.”

“Maybe she's not there physically now either. It's just where her mind is. Like, maybe that's a self protection thing. Her mind goes there to recuperate while her body rests. Maybe it's the only reason she survived in the Upside Down as long as she did.”

“If she stays in that place though, we can't figure out where she is in the Upside Down. Because she can't tell us what's nearby.” Mike looks down at the Supercom he'd laid on the table. “Although, we can't use the radios anyway, so maybe it doesn't matter.”

Dustin claps him on the shoulder and says, “that's where the lights come in, man.”

It's dark by the time they've got all the lights and the alphabet wall set up and Joyce insists the boys all go home and rest after getting nothing so much as a blink from the lights.


	9. Pride (In the Name of Love)

“We'll try again tomorrow, guys,” she says, relieved that the chief has agreed to drive each of the boys home tonight. There hasn't been a sign of the monster since last November, but Will’s admission coupled with more communication with a child stuck in the Upside Down has her on edge.

Jonathan notices as soon as he pops in from work. Joyce considers not telling him for a moment, but decides that maybe she needs to model the openness she encouraged in her oldest son and tells him everything.

“Are you ok?” he asks when she's done.

Her heart. These sweet, wonderful, caring boys. Her boys. Who never had much of anything, she couldn't give them much, but still they wanted to give to others.

“Oh, no, I'm not ok. Not really. I'm terrified, but I don't think there are any other options.” She squeezes Jonathan's hand and tries for a smile. It falls flat, she can tell. “Will just wants to help, and truly, I do too.”

“Do you think they can find her?”

“Oh, I hope so. That poor girl's been through enough.”

“So has Will.”

“I know, sweetie. But I think this is sort of a point of pride with him too. To prove that the Upside Down didn't break him.”

Jonathan gives her a hard look. So stubborn sometimes, like his father, although she'll never tell him that.

“Yeah, I get that. But maybe we should be ready for another monster or something. Nancy and I still have a lot of that gear.”

Joyce forces herself not to ask yet again about the nature of his relationship with the aforementioned Wheeler girl. It's a soft spot with him she's learned. So instead, she says, “you can get it again, if you want, but be careful. And remember, the only thing that seemed to do it any harm was that girl’s mind.”

“Yeah. Yeah. Alright,” Jonathan nods twice, another habit of his father's, but on her son it's endearing. A sign of his actually listening, as opposed to her ex-husband’s act of pretending to listen.

“Get some sleep sweetie,” she says, having to lean up to kiss him on the cheek - oh, where have the years gone? - and shooing him off to his bedroom.


	10. Time After Time

But Jonathan can't sleep. He hasn't slept well in the months since Will disappeared and came home and he's certainly not going to sleep well tonight after hearing about another round of interdimensional chatter and seeing the living room wall painted with letters again.

Deciding there's no resting tonight, he gets up and slips out of the house, outside and into the car, and drives off.

He would say that he didn’t really have a plan for where he was going, but he's not at all surprised at himself when he parks near the intersection of Maple and Dearborn and walks the two blocks to the Wheeler house.

He stands outside the house for approximately ten minutes, trying to figure out whether to try waking her up, when he sees a light in her bedroom window. It's not surprising, given that she's told him she also has had trouble sleeping since last year's events, but it doesn't strike him as a coincidence. He wonders what, if anything, Mike has told to his sister tonight.

Just when he decides that at least he won't feel bad for having woken her up, and goes to look for an appropriately sized pebble for tossing at her window, said window opens, and Nancy climbs out of it.

She sees him, and nearly slips in surprise, but catches herself just in time.

“Jonathan!” she exclaims in a nearly too loud whisper, and he rushes to help her down. “I was just thinking about you.”

“You were?” he says, unable to keep his voice completely neutral.

It’s hard to tell in the dark, but he thinks she almost blushes. “Yes, well, maybe coming to find you. Mike told me some pretty crazy stuff and I couldn't sleep.”

“Yeah same here. I mean, with Will and me. Well, really my mom telling me about Will.”

“Yeah.”

For two people apparently unable to wait until morning to talk to each other, they suddenly seem to have run out of things to say. Or at least, run out of the ability to talk. But it’s been this way since last year. Late night talks that aren't really talks, where they seem to just need to be with someone else who was there that night in the woods with the Demagorgon.

“God, I was so stupid,” Nancy says finally breaking the silence. “I thought it was over, that maybe we could go back to normal. Well, sort of normal. I mean, things were never really the same for me without Barb. And Mike’s been pretty off since El went missing. That's why when he first told me about hearing her again on the walkie-talkie, I thought maybe he was just cracking up, you know? But it seems like The Upside Down isn't done with Hawkins.”

“Yeah well, as soon as we get her out of there, I think it's time for Hawkins to be done with The Upside Down,” Jonathan replies, shoving his hands in his pockets and looking down. Looking straight at her is still hard sometimes.

“Hmm, wanting to adopt a little sister too?” Nancy asks, joking.

He smiles at her. “Not quite. But she helped get Will back. The least I can do is the same. I don't know how to open portholes or dimensions or anything like that, but I know we still have the traps and stuff. I figured I'd ask if you wanted to help me out with one last monster hunt.”

Smiling up at him she says, “You bet.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whew, sorry this update took so long! Life has been crazy busy for me lately, but I'm hoping I can finish this fic soon! Thanks to anyone still reading!


	11. Down Under

Nancy and Jonathan have spent all night getting traps ready for a possible Demagorgon reappearance around the spot where El’s box is in the woods. Mike really doesn't want to think about what else they might have been doing. He still doesn't get what the deal is with them, although he is glad his sister isn't dating Steve anymore since he went away to college.

Mike finds himself glad that Joyce made them wait to go down to El’s box until broad daylight because even at noon, it's a gray, dreary day, and picking around the traps at night probably would have been impossible.

They've split up into groups at each of the places they think El would be most likely to be, at least, from the side of the Upside Down. Mike and Nancy are by the box, Jonathan and Dustin are in the Wheeler basement, Joyce and Will are at Castle Byers, and Lucas and the chief are in the Byers’ living room. Each has a walkie-talkie to communicate with the others, and each has lights of some kind to communicate with El.

“Okay, well, here goes, I guess,” Mike says, coming to the box. He’s clutching a stack of Eggos, figuring it can't hurt to have them on hand in case she's hungry.

“Hey,” Nancy says, sitting down on the box. “Look Mike, I know this last year has been tough. It has for me too. We both lost people. And now we have a chance to get one of them back. But no matter what happens, I don't want you to think that any of this is your fault.”

Mike doesn't want to have a heart to heart with his sister. He just wants El back. He wants to give her Eggos and maybe a family, a chance at a normal life. He wants to make her smile more, and take her to the snowball like he promised, and, maybe, maybe kiss her again.

But he can tell that Nancy does want a heart to heart, so he sets down his flashlight and says, “yeah, I know.”

“Guilt, it doesn't help anything. For a while, you think it's good to feel guilty, that it makes you a better person. But after a while you're holding onto it for you, not them.”

Mike thinks for a moment that maybe she needs this heart to heart more than he does. So he takes her hand and says, “yeah. I know.”

“I just, I don't want you to feel like everything stops after today if we don't find her. We'll keep looking now that we know she's out there. But… you have to keep on living too. You can't fall apart the way you did before. I need my brother.”

He wants to tell her that he can't think about not finding her, that the thought of finding her is what's kept him going, but just says, “thanks sis. How about we get started?”

 

___

She awakens into a chorus of night, at first, indistinguishable from herself, and the sound of rushing black wind all around her. But eventually she solids out and feels the words separate from her and from the black place, like oil separating from water.

“El? El? El! El!?” the chorus echoes wetly. The voices are converging and blending and grating apart again, climbing into her mind from all directions. She thinks for a moment, a day, a year maybe, that she's dreaming again.

But finally she hears something that makes her think it isn’t a dream. The voices calling have become less and less frequent, it's certainly no longer a chorus. And now she hears from one direction the sound of crying. A sob and then, “El, please. Please come back.”

It's Mike and it's real. The strangeness of the black place bends his voice in the same way if bends time and space, but she can feel that it's really him, and really happening now.

“Mike,” she says, sitting up slowly, feeling terrible. She is the reason he's crying. She wishes she could go away so she wouldn't make him cry anymore.

“El?” he says? The voice isn't coming from a radio she thinks. He must be close to her in his Right Side Up. “El, are you there?”

“Mike, I'm sorry. I'm a bad friend. I'm sorry.”

“What? No, El, no. You're a great friend!”

For a moment she thinks she can see him, a bulging shape fuzzing through the fabric of her black place, but she shakes her head and says, “bad men, my fault.”


	12. Against All Odds

Mike doesn't know what to do, he knows she's there, well somewhere that they can hear each other, and for a moment he thought he could see a glimpse of maybe the Upside Down or somewhere else, like a fleshy window was opening up in a tree opposite him.

Mike picks up the walkie-talkie and tunes it to the channel all the others are tuned to and says the prompt he and the guys had come up with to serve as code for talking about making contact with Eleven.

“Guys, what were you saying last night about aliens making contact with us?”

Dustin responds first, “that it's only a matter of time.”

“Yeah,” Lucas comes in. “Only a matter of time.”

“Yeah, well, I read this weird article that makes me think maybe it already happened. You guys should come over and check it out.”

It doesn't take anyone long to converge by the box in the woods. Soon they're all standing around, looking thoughtful at Mike’s recounting of events.

“It's like, I dunno, like…” he pauses, suddenly reminded of a play his mother had taken him to see when he was just 7 years old. “Nancy, do you remember when mom took us to see Peter Pan?”

“Yes…” she answers, clearly unsure of where he's going with this.

“Do you remember the part where they brought Tinkerbell back to life? Everyone in the audience had to clap and cheer for her?”

“Yes.”

“What if - I mean what if we did that for El? Not applause, but like, all of us saying how much we missed her and want her to be safe and home. Stuff like that?”

“All at once?” Lucas asks?

“No, I don't think so,” Will says. “When I was there, hearing my mom, hearing what she had to say was almost as important as hearing her voice. Maybe more important. We should all go one at a time.”

“Right,” Mike says. “Ok, El? El, if you can hear me, blink the flashlight once.”

The flashlight blinked.

“Ok, El, everyone's here, me, Lucas, Dustin, Will, Ms. Byers, Jonathan, Nancy, and the chief. And we all want to tell you how much we want you to come back, right guys?”

“Right,” they all say

“Ok, who wants to go first?”

“I'll go,” Joyce says. “El, sweetie? I hope you can hear me. I know you've had a tough time. A much tougher time than anyone ever should. And I know maybe you don't trust the world much. But we all want to be able to show you good things too. Nice things about our world. Families and friends and dogs. We want to give you a nice life because you're such a brave girl. Please come back.”

“Yeah, kid,” the chief says. “These boys are bound to get into a lot more trouble looking for you than they would just being your friends. And besides, I'd like to be able to give you warm eggos on a plate for once.”

They all smile a bit, thinking of her love for eggos.

“And I'd like to be able to make you some real waffles,” Jonathan says. “one taste and you'll think eggos are just ok. I… I owe you that at least, for bringing my brother back. You risked everything to help him. I still need to be able to thank you properly.”

“Yeah,” Lucas cuts in. “I never thanked you either. For finding one of my best friends and for being so awesome. And I'm sorry I called you the monster. You're not. You're super cool, especially for a girl. I think I was sorta jealous of how cool you were, considering I was the coolest one around before you. You need to come back so we can both be the awesome in our group.”

“Lucas is right, El. About you being awesome, I mean,” Dustin says. “Not sure about the rest, but you are awesome. I mean, you flipped a van. And you were on our side at first no questions asked. You fought for us. You fought for Will. You're a true friend.”

“I didn’t get the chance to thank you for fighting for me,” Will says, nodding along with Dustin's statement. “And for taking care of my friends while I was gone. I think we could be good friends, El. From everything I've been told, I want to be your friend.”

“You were an extra friend to my brother when he needed one,” Nancy steps in. “You gave him hope. And you helped him without thinking about how it might hurt you. You sacrificed yourself for him, and I'll always be grateful I still have a little brother thanks to you. But you know, I wouldn't mind having you for a little sister too.”

Aware he still has yet to go, Mike takes a deep breath and kneels by the box, placing a hand on its lid.

“El, I don't know what else to say that hasn’t already been said. You're brave and giving, you saved me. Twice. You saved my friends. You became my friend without any convincing. You accepted me, no questions asked. I - I needed that, especially then. It hasn't been the same without you.” his voice cracks, “I haven't been the same without you. I've missed you so much, El. Please come back.” He's kneeling now, forehead resting on the lid of the box, he can't look at anyone else while he cries, begging her to come back. “We aren’t complete without you. I'm not complete without you. I broke so many promises and I'm sorry, but please come back.”

-

She thinks she sees Mike coming to her again, or maybe she's coming to him. The Upside Down swirls into focus and she feels more solid than she has in ages. She realizes she's by the box in the woods and Mike's words are coming to her there, as clearly as if he were sitting right next to her.

“Please come back, El, please come back.”

The Upside Down swirls and she thinks she almost sees the right side up.

Everyone's words, but his especially have turned a spot inside her chest into a warm golden glow, longing to go back to the comfort of Mike's blanket fort. She still worries about being a danger to them, but hearing their voices, their words, even though she only understands half of them… the words make her want to get back. The urgency behind them moves her, starts to push away the tendrils of doubt.

Mike is crying, she can almost see him, as if through a strange, blurred window. And she is crying too. She remembers the warmth of his hugs, the feel of his hand on hers and aches for the comfort of it. Aches to comfort him as he comforted her.

“Please, El,” he says. “I can't- I, we need you. I need you.”

She's still terrified, still thinks she isn’t worthy of his faith, but decides that if her absence causes him pain, it's worth trying to get back again.

She concentrates on the warm spot in her chest and puts her hands where she can almost see his on the box.

-

El bursts from the fleshy window, falling forward onto Mike, a tangle of tattered clothes and Upside Down slime in the now softly falling rain.

Mike doesn't care that El looks objectively awful or that he's soaked to the bone. To him there is no better sight than her shivering form, and the feel of her body against his is warmth enough.

They cling to one another, sobbing tears of joy, and feeling like his heart is going to beat out of his chest and his breath is going to swallow his throat, Mike feels a surge like a thunderbolt, a thousand times stronger than the one in the bathroom or the cafeteria. He wants to kiss her. Badly. But not with witnesses, not while they're both crying and exhausted, not when she's been through so much. Not now. So for now, Mike leans his forehead against hers, for now, just revelling in her nearness. For now, it is enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ah, I finally got El back to Hawkins! I'm sure this is nowhere near as awesome as what the Duffer brothers will come up with, and if the season 2 teaser trailer is anything to go on, all of this fic will be horribly AU on about 8 months. BUT, this has helped me get over my Stranger Things withdrawal. And I finished my first multi chapter fic! Wooo! Thanks to everyone for the kudos & comments. I may add a short epilogue so stay tuned!


	13. Epilogue: Under Pressure

Jim watches the kids sitting on the worn carpet of his trailer. Got to get that carpet replaced, he thinks to himself. The boy is showing her his stack of comic books, and they are so full of color and life, the girl is fascinated by them. He sees the way the boy looks at her when he thinks no one is looking. Decides it’s alright because of the way she looks at him sometimes too.

“Oh, I knew it, I knew Jean would be your favorite X-men!” the boy shouts, punching a fist in the air. “Dustin owes me 5 bucks!”

She smiles and continues reading. She knows a surprising amount for someone so deprived. Her reading and mathematics levels are high, which Jim thinks makes sense considering all the stuff they would have wanted her to spy for. But her comprehension level is low. Which, he thinks, sadly also makes sense. If she understood all the stuff she’d been reading and saying and relaying back to the bastards who’d made her, she might not have done it. “Not socially or emotionally ready for 8th grade,” the school counselor had said. “But maybe with some mild exposure, she’ll be ready to enroll in high school next year or the year after.”

By “mild exposure” Jim knows of course she means socializing with other kids her age. And he’s seen what all the Wheeler kid and his friends would do for her, and decides nerd socialization with all boys is better than none at all. Course, he’s not disappointed when Lucas introduces El to his new neighbor Max, a tough girl he admires right away. Good for her to have a girl friend or two too, he thinks.

“Mike?” El asks in her soft voice.

“Yeah, El?”

“The people afraid of the X-men, that’s why kids like Troy were scared of me?”

Mike sighs. “Well, yeah, I mean, you have to know not everyone can do what you do. And sometimes people are scared of things they don’t understand. Like how you were scared of thunder at first because you’d never heard it before.”

El nods. “I think maybe I'll keep what I can do a secret then.”

“That's probably not a bad idea,” Mike says. “I mean, we all know you're great, but… you know.”

“Mouthbreathers.”

“Yeah. Lots of mouthbreathers out there, unfortunately.”

“Right. I have to go to the bathroom,” she says, getting up and exiting the living room, offering Jim a small smile as she catches him watching her and Mike from the kitchen. Jim watches her walk down the hall and close the bathroom door. He looks back at the Wheeler kid and catches him watching her as well.

“She really likes living here,” Mike ventures. “I - is it weird to thank you for taking care of her?”

Jim puts on his best unreadable chief face and says, “Sort of, but all of everything was weird, so it’s no big deal.” Mike nods and goes back to reading his comic.

The phone rings and Jim answers it. He’s angered, but not surprised by the voice he hears on the other end of the phone.

“Hello, Jim,” the smooth, clinical voice of Dr. Brenner clips.

“Oh hey,” Jim answers easily, turning his back to Mike and slipping into what he’s sure would be construed as easy conversation with some boring old acquaintance from town. “I was wondering if you’d call again.”

“You haven’t given me an answer yet, Jim. Not that you really have much of a decision to make. You knew the terms last year when you began working with us. And we have even gone over and above being lenient about them as regards to the asset you now currently possess.”

“Asset?!” Jim hisses, hiding his face from Mike’s view. “Possess?! What is wrong with you people!”

“We are simply protecting our country with our research. Protecting you.”

Jim laughs. “Yeah? Well, tell that to Joyce.”

“This is not a debate, Jim. Either agree to the terms, or Hawkins lab will commence with capture of the asset.”

“You know you can’t do that,” Jim says, thinking he’s calling Brenner out on his bluff. “She’d kill you as soon as see you.”

“We have been working on developing some rather promising looking reacquisition strategies.” His voice is like a sick, black oil dripping into Jim’s ear. “But we’d rather not use them. There has been enough bloodshed for one town.”

“Damn right there has,” Jim grunts, but the doctor’s words have chilled him to the bone.

“Then you agree? You will monitor the asset, keep the asset in line, and if it appears at any time she will pose a threat to our lab’s secrecy, you will terminate the asset as instructed?”

“It won’t come to that. I guarantee it.”

“We will see. Good day, Jim.” There’s an audible click. The doctor is gone.

Jim slams the phone down on the receiver and bites at his fist in anger for a moment, before turning back around.

The Wheeler kid is standing right behind him.

“GAH! Jesus, what the hell, kid?”

“Me?” Mike says, his dark eyes looking almost too sullen for someone so young. “What about you? What the hell was that all about?”

“Look, kid, I don’t know what you think you heard, but I-”

“You know what, I don’t want to hear it. I’m sick of grown-ups lying so they don’t have to deal with their morals. I get it. I’m not stupid. A deal had to be made to get Will back, and now a deal’s got to be made to let El live. Just - you said ‘it won’t come to that’, yeah? So keep that promise. Don’t let it.”

“You aren’t gonna run off and tell her or any of your little friends?”

“What? No. No. That’ll just freak everyone out, especially her. And she needs something.... Normal. Well, normal-ish for once. But you have to make a promise to me too.”

Jim grabs his bottle of scotch from the top cabinet and pours himself a glass to take the edge off. He takes a long swig and looks back at this serious kid, almost wanting to laugh at his earnestness if it weren’t so warranted. “Yeah?” He says. “What’s that?”

“Don’t talk to me like I’m five, this isn’t some pinky-swear bullshit. The only way they’ll stop hunting her is if she’s gone, or they’re gone, right?”

“Pretty much.”

“Then it’s settled. No matter how long it takes, we figure out a way to take down Hawkins Lab.”

Mike holds out a hand and Jim eyes it for it a moment before finishing his drink and grasping the boy’s hand and shaking it twice.

“That was always the eventual plan, kid.”

“Good.”

They stand in the kitchen a moment longer, each one sizing the other up. El emerges from the bathroom and they both look from each other to her.

“What’s going on?” she asks, clearly sensing some collusion.

“Well, we’re definitely not planning your surprise birthday party,” Jim says.

El’s face lights up at the words “birthday party” having only recently learned what those things were.

The boy catches his gaze again and Jim decides he’s not sure he can trust this kid with such a crazy huge secret.

_

Mike knows Hopper doesn’t trust him. But that’s alright. He doesn’t trust Hopper either.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Couldn't resist throwing in a true Stranger Things cliffhanger ending in there. Also, I think Hopper’s meeting with the lab folks at the end of last season will play a big part in this season.
> 
> Thanks to everyone for reading, kudoing, and commenting!


End file.
